Staffing is the variable the team controls most directly.
The following offers considerations about how teams plan event staffing.
Paid, volunteer, and contracted
Each carries a different relationship with the team, different screening expectations, different supervisory authority, and different accountability. Events often combine all three — paid event staff alongside organizational volunteers alongside specialist contractors. Teams typically distinguish between them in the staffing plan.
Screening level
Different roles need different screening. A volunteer interacting with minors needs the screening attached to that interaction. A volunteer doing setup and breakdown without participant contact may need less. The right screening level is context-specific; the question is whether each role’s actual screening matches the role’s actual exposure.
Briefing and training
Whether event staff have been briefed on the event, on safeguarding posture for the event, on emergency procedures, on chain of command. Whether they know what to do if they see something. Whether they know who to escalate to. Briefings are often the difference between staff who are present at the event and staff who are operationally part of the event.
Roles and accountability
The five coordinator roles on the event plan (overall, operations, safety, logistics, finance) reflect the most common breakdown. Some events need fewer; some need more. Smaller events often combine roles. The point isn’t the roles themselves — it’s that someone owns each function and everyone at the event knows who.
Ratios
Adult-to-MVA ratios are part of the activity plan and the venue plan. Adult-to-attendee ratios matter for crowd events. Specialist-to-participant ratios matter for activity events. Each event has its own staffing density.
Coverage gaps
Breaks, shift changes, cross-venue movement, dropouts. The plan that works at full staffing often doesn’t work when one person is on break. Teams sometimes plan for the gap state explicitly — who covers when X is away.
The staffing list field captures what the team has done for staffing this specific event. The Connections field links to underlying Adult Group pieces where event staff come from those groups.